Archive for the ‘YouTube’ Category

The problem with humor is that you have to be quick about it. The news cycle goes quickly. Before you realize it, people are talking about the next big thing. In order to have great comedic timing, you have to say something no one else has said, and you have to say it quickly.

So I tried something. I have a YouTube channel where I spoof the news. I made a satire video about the FBI investigation into whether Hillary Clinton broke the law by using a private e-mail server. I uploaded this video for two reasons: 1. A lot of the news articles I was seeing was missing the point that the investigation was just to see if she was treasonous (in other words if she did it on purpose). And 2: To see if people would click on my video over a week after the news broke.

The Hillary e-mail thing is kind of old news. However, it is proving to have a bit of an evergreen appeal, as people continue to talk about it. Considering it takes a long time for people to actually find my videos, anything I publish is old news.

If you search “Men In Black 3 parody” in YouTube, my video is the first to come up. And it’s the only one that’s really relevant.

What I’m hoping by all this is that by being first to the party, I’ll get a head start on views. The script is good, and I especially love the ending. And the video is first, or at least among the first if I missed the others.

The recordings can’t be live. And they have to be something that sounds like it would be the background to a scene in a movie. It has to convey an emotion without being distracting.

In submitting work, you agree to have your work used in a video that will only appear on the Internet. You understand that you will not be compensated for the work.

I can’t promise I’ll use it, or even contact you, so please don’t send any follow-up messages. If I don’t respond, I’m too busy with real life stuff. I’ll definitely respond if I’m going to use your work.

Keep in mind, most of the time I’m only going to use a shortened version of the work, so viewers wouldn’t be getting the whole thing for free.

So leave a comment here, or on my video if you want to share your songs. Leave a link to your work. Also, list your website if you have one. Provide whatever contact information you want to be public. Because other people will be viewing this link or watching my video. So, even if I don’t use your work, someone else might.

I wrote a short story for a client, and it turned out really good. Then, after all was said and done, my client mentioned he stole the idea from the Internet.

If all you need to do is right-click on something, why be original? Creativity isn’t rewarded, it’s just copied. People who want to copy something because they like it, but don’t realize there’s a value there.

There’s an assumption that if it’s online, it should be free. If this was the case, no one would be making any money off their creations and you’d see much less of it online.

Anything can be ripped off. That’s why it’s even more important to be 100 percent original. Don’t fall into the easy trap of generating content mashed up from other people’s ideas. You won’t stand out. You’ll be exactly like everyone else who is doing it.

We don’t revere people like Steve Jobs because he copied other people. He got the respect he did because he created something new.

When anything can be copied off the internet the only thing I have is originality. People want original content, not the same old thing. That’s why, for instance, Charlie Sheen jokes got old very quickly.

My writing might not be much, but at least it’s my own.

Here’s my YouTube channel. You’ll find some very funny and some very wrong short films here:

An animator I’ve been working with asked me to come up with some R-rated jokes to animate. He wants to sync into the popularity that comes from Family Guy and especially Seth McFarlane’s private channel.

I already created a character who plays movie-based video games and makes fun of them. So, all right. He wants adult humor. Fine. What terrible movie should become a video game?

So, I came up with a few jokes and wrote it. It took me an hour, probably. I figured the idea was worth an hour. I have a college degree. I’ve been a professional writer for about 10 years. I didn’t want to spend any more time on this than I had to.

Then came the actual production. It takes a lot longer to animate, and the back-and-forth e-mails as we narrowed stuff down took quite a long time. We had to agree on character and background designs, an intro to the series, and I did the voice acting.

1. It’s about the characters. A lot of people rip on Twilight because of the drama. However, the drama is what drew fans to the series. Critics whine that vampires and werewolves should be more visceral, not lingering in love triangles. So I played on that.

My parody is about a Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn video game. So I made the first part of the gameplay about relationships, which I see as the strength (not the weakness) of the books.

2. Take it too far. Parodies work if you take it just far enough outside of the spectrum of what’s acceptable in the book’s real world. The second act of the video you’ll see just how far I pushed it.

3. Prey upon people’s preconceived notions. The interaction between Edward Cullen and Jacob at the end is based upon what pretty much every guy thinks Twilight is. It’s an easy joke, and I’m not proud.

4. End with a 180 degree change. The problem with some parodies is that they just keep doing the same joke over and over. So, I wanted to make sure the last thing my protagonist says is a surprise.

Like this:

I’m not proud. In fact, it helps to own up to your stupidity outright. Let me give you an example. I was sitting in a car, when a friend came up to the side to ask me a question. I stuck my head out and bonked it right on the window.

“Did you just hit your head on the window?” he said, laughing.

“Yeah.”

He laughed some more, and that was the end of it. If I had denied it, he’d still be busting on me to this day.

So, to that end, here are three things most people wouldn’t admit:

3. Stuck between a fork and a hard place

You know when a drawer won’t close because a utensil gets wedged in there real good? The handle is stuck on the bottom somewhere and the top gets propped up against the underside of the cabinet?

Well, imagine instead that it was a fork getting crammed between the utensil holder and my middle finger.

I was pulling out a spoon for my daughter to stir her chocolate milk. She was talking and I was paying more attention to her than what I was doing. I pushed the drawer closed with my hip as my hand was over the forks.

Here’s a nice little video that shows the damage:

2. The builders are coming!

Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, there were always houses being built. They were a beacon to neighborhood kids. We climbed all over them, imagining what the rooms would be like, what the people would be like.

When I was in third grade I was venturing into one such house. And then I heard “The builders are coming!” My exploration partner sighted the worker van coming down the street. I leaped off the first floor.

But it was built on an incline. In the back of the house, the first floor was about five feet off the ground. At least, that’s what I guess it was now, looking back. It could have been three.

I remember just lying on my back on a slab of wood. I didn’t move and I felt like I couldn’t and I didn’t know why. Then my friend grabbed my hand and pulled me up. My neck hurt instantly. We ran. It turned out it wasn’t the builders, just a similar-looking van.

For the rest of the week, I couldn’t move my neck without pain. My teacher told me to keep moving my neck little by little until it felt better. It did, eventually. My parents said I never complained and they never knew. I was a quiet kid, but I still can’t figure out how this got missed. Anyway, it was probably whiplash, the reason I have scoliosis and regular headaches to this day.

1. The Kazoo

I used to keep a kazoo in my car at all times. It’s a good idea. You never know when you’re going to need a kazoo.

My car had a perfect place for it – a small cutout to the left of the steering wheel. In a more expensive model, some wonderful feature was probably supposed to go there – like a chocolate dispenser or a flux capacitor. As I got the bottom line model, it was just a hole. The older man who sold it to me told me twice “You can put your McDonald’s hamburgers in there.” Instead, I kept a kazoo there, with almost half of it sticking out.

It had rained while I was at work, and there was a big puddle by the driver’s side door. I reached over the puddle and opened the door. I judged the distance and guessed I could jump over the puddle into my car.

Somehow my legs went wild and my knee scraped against the kazoo. The cheap plastic mouthpiece scraped the first few layers of skin off my knee.

At first, I was too shocked to know what happened. Then, the blood seeped up from the wound. It ran down my leg and soaked my sock on the ride home.

Again, I tell people these things because it’s not good to hide stupid things you’ve done. You should share them and let everyone in on the joke.

Besides, I already told one person and he tells everyone so there’s no keeping it a secret!